[southwestforests]

Sci fi is one of my favorite literary genres. The other favorite is nonfiction transportation: space, railroads, planes, boats.
There are reasons I won't go in to that I can't read nearly as much sci-fi as in the past.

Way back in 8th grade in 1970s school library had a book of Star Trek short stories and a book of general sci fi short stories. Don't remember the title of either book.
My favorite from the general sci fi book was titled Thingamajig.
In Star Trek book was one story where it began with, or in first couple sentences had "the ship was beautiful". That got me thinking, okay, what would a beautiful ship look like to me: what would come out of my own mind and being?
Several sketches later a naval architecture style had been settled on.
Next thought was, who are these people and what is their story?
So I started tinkering at writing and drawing. Is fun when your characters sort of take on lives of their own.
And one wonders where the ideas come from. Okay, yes, they come from imagination often influenced by real people and events.
But, really, where do people invent worlds, cultures, personalities, from whole cloth?
How does that invention, creation, happen?

Oh, and even though instigated by Star Trek, my story is not Star Trek -- the engineering is only casually dealt with.
There are no engineering details on how starship drives work, only the visual and functional effects are described.